Can’t see up close? You can now get FDA-approved eye drops that will improve vision
If you’re one of the millions of people living in the U.S. who struggle with blurry near vision, your life could soon get a whole lot easier.
With a prescription from your doctor, you can now buy U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved eye drops to treat presbyopia — an age-related condition that strips your eyes of the ability to clearly see up close — from your local pharmacy.
Vuity, developed by pharmaceutical company Allergan, was the first and only eye drops product to be approved by the FDA in October for presbyopia, which affects nearly half of the U.S. adult population, beginning around 40 years old.
There’s no way to stop the normal aging process that leads to the condition; its name originates from a Greek word that translates to “old eye,” according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. But you can regain some visual clarity with the help of glasses, contact lenses or surgery.
The eye drops work within 15 minutes of application and can improve near vision for up to six hours without impacting how you see farther away, a news release says. A Vuity spokesperson told CBS New York the medication will cost about $80 for a 30-day supply.
“As I’ve gotten older, my vision has changed, and it has become almost impossible to see clearly up close unless I wear my readers,” Toni Wright, a participant in the clinical trials that tested the product’s safety and effectiveness, said in a news release. “I’m so excited the investigational treatment… is now approved and available as a treatment to manage age-related blurry near vision.”
How do the eye drops work?
Vuity works by improving your eye’s own ability to change pupil size.
In people without presbyopia, the clear lens that sits behind their iris — the colored part of your eye that controls how much light enters — can easily change shape, allowing them to see both up close and far away. But the lenses of people with the condition are more rigid, so it’s more difficult to change shape, causing blurry vision when trying to focus on nearby objects.
Company officials warn headaches and eye redness are common side effects of the eye drops. And if you wear contacts, you should remove them before applying the drops then put them back in after about 10 minutes.
You should also be careful when driving at night, as “temporary difficulty in adjusting focus between near and distance objects may occur.”
